Jay Ritter has an excellent web page of IPO data including data files from the appendices of several IPO papers.

The US Securities and Exchange Comission (SEC) has information on company registrations (required prior to IPO on US exchange) (See Researching IPOs on SEC site.)
Company SEC filings can be accessed through the Search EDGAR facility

In part 2 we used Thomson Reuters Datastream to move from all currently listed UK companies (part 1) to including delisted/dead companies. It became surprisingly complicated so a review seems appropriate.

Three possible ways to get a list of all listed UK companies:

Datastream Search for all equities on the London Stock Exchange, major security and primary quote. (TYPE = ‘EQ’ and EXDSCD = ‘LN’ and MAJOR = ‘Y’ and ISINID = ‘P’) DS-LN-EQ-MP (No of securities/companies 7428 – 4 June 2013)

The 755 companies only in WSCOPEUK includes over 600 investment trusts, and companies on other exchanges.

(click to expand)

The 193 companies in WSCOPEUK and DS-LN-EQ-MP but not FBRIT+DEADUK appear to be mostly unquoted but with accounting data in Worldscope. Most don’t have a SEDOL code.

The 690 companies only in DS-LN-EQ-MP also appear to be mostly unquoted, but without accounting data in Worldscope. Only 56 have a SEDOL code.

Using Thomson Reuters Datastream to get all listed UK companies there are the expected problems of how to deal with foreign companies listing in the UK and investment trusts. If accounting data is needed then the historic data available is less than for the price (financial market) data. This review also shows that there is a problem with unquoted companies. These are included in Datastream, and Worldscope, probably because they are traded over the counter (OTC).

The best alternative to Thomson Reuters Datastream for getting a historical listing of companies listed on the London Stock Exchange the London Share Price Database (LSPD). This is a specialist research database (programming required) and only includes monthly price data. For more details see Jan 2011 post Finding UK listed companies – try LSPD.

After looking at all currently listed UK companies (part 1) we can now look at producing a list that includes delisted/dead companies. (Note that delisted/dead companies may still exist but their shares are no longer actively traded.)

Thomson Reuters Datastream has worldwide coverage and includes a number of pre-defined constituent lists that can be used as a starting point.

WSCOPEUK is a list of UK companies that are also covered by the Worldscope company accounts database. On 28 May 2013 WSCOPEUK contains 5015 securities (a few companies issue multiple securities).

However, as with the list of current UK companies from the London Stock Exchange (LSE), there are a number of filters that we might want to apply.

205 securities are not listed on the LSE – most of these are on ICAP Sec & Der.E (formerly UK Plus) exchange, some have no value for EXNAME. 169 securities are not the major security of the company. 86 securities are not the primary listing of the security.

All securities on WSCOPEUK on 28 May 2013 – No of securities 5015

Securities on LSE, that are major and primary (EXDSCD = ‘LN’ and MAJOR = ‘Y’ and ISINID = ‘P’ – No of securities/companies 4670

Securities/companies that are not Investment Trusts or Closed-End Funds (TYPE = ‘EQ’) – No of securities/companies 4055

Of these 4055 securities/companies, 2732 are dead/suspended and 1323 are active securities/companies – 517 on LSE Main market and 806 on LSE AIM market (Datastream variable REMK identifies AIM listed companies but only if they are active)

One potential limitation of WSCOPEUK is that it only includes companies that delisted/died in 1985 or later. Indeed the data for early years looks sparse – it has 7 companies that died in 1985 and 11 companies that died in 1986.

Datastream also has the constituent lists FBRIT (Research UK active) and DEADUK. Using the same filters as above – first FBRIT

All securities on FBRIT (active securities) on 28 May 2013 – No of securities 1640

Securities on LSE, that are major and primary (EXDSCD = ‘LN’ and MAJOR = ‘Y’ and ISINID = ‘P’ – No of securities/companies 1595

Securities/companies that are not Investment Trusts or Closed-End Funds (TYPE = ‘EQ’) – No of securities/companies 1549

All securities on DEADUK (dead securities) on 28 May 2013 – No of securities 8568

Securities on LSE, that are major and primary (EXDSCD = ‘LN’ and MAJOR = ‘Y’ and ISINID = ‘P’ – No of securities/companies 5353

Securities/companies that are not Investment Trusts or Closed-End Funds (TYPE = ‘EQ’) – No of securities/companies 5082

Of these 5082 securities/companies, 4872 died after 31 Dec 1984, 678 died in 1985 and 150 died in 1986.

As in part 1 the number of companies depends on how you choose to define “UK listed companies” and the time period that you are considering.

One major advantage of using Thomson Reuters Datastream in this investigation is that the companies can be identified using codes (in this case the Datastream dscode) rather than names so getting further data is easier.

overview companies in wscopeuk (click to expand)

Looking at the Datastream Navigator summary data for WSCOPEUK it is clear that this constituent list includes unquoted companies for which there is no share price data, and there are many UK listed companies where Datastream has share price data but no accounting data in Worldscope. Having discovered while writing this post that there are more issues here than expected further analysis is postponed to part3.

The analysis of Datastream’s coverage of UK companies was done using the Datastream Navigator advanced search, and a DS request table to get static data about all members of constituent lists WSCOPEUK, FBRIT and DEADUK – see screenshot for example results.

Researchers often want a list of “all UK companies” as a first step in creating a sample set. At this stage first check that we really mean “all UK listed companies” (also known as public or quoted companies).

[For all UK public and private companies there is the FAME database, but research requests for just listed/public companies are more common.]

Now to keep things simple in this part one we shall refine this a little more to:

– all UK listed companies that are currently on the London Stock Exchange (LSE)

This eliminates UK companies that choose to list on foreign exchanges (Manchester United is listed in New York). It is easier to first consider current companies. [current and historical companies we leave for part 2].

Restrict to LSE Main Market and not the International Main Market – No of Companies 540

LSE list of all companies (click to expand)

The removal of Investment Trusts is quite common – sometimes research involves other sector specific restrictions and there are a variety of industry/sector codes that can be used. The removal of Depository Receipts and the International Main Market eliminates companies that have a secondary listing on the LSE to make their shares more accessible to UK investors.

The LSE “List of All Companies” spreadsheet is a good way of illustrating the restrictions that might be added to get the “UK listed companies” required for a specific research analysis. However, it is not ideal as it only provides company names. You cannot load a list of companies into a database using their names you need a list of company identifiers (recognised by the database that you wish to use).

Databases use identifiers because companies can change their name over time, and because names can differ slightly between databases.